Mongolian band, The HU, mix metal and traditional Mongolia folk

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Originally published at: Mongolian band, The HU, mix metal and traditional Mongolia folk | Boing Boing

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Ripping it up, Mongolian style! I sense a bit of Psycho Billy influence in there…

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See also Altan Urag.

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Mongolia and metal were just meant to be. The mythology, clothing, and the traditional instruments are a great addition to the genre. Been a long time coming.

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I actually surprised Mongolia didn’t invent heavy metal.

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I first got into Tuvan throat singing thanks to reading Richard Feynman. I had, what seemed at the time like a gimmicky album, Back Tuva Future featuring Kongar-ol Ondar (sadly deceased) alongside Willie Nelson, Buster Scruggs et al.

Really great to see more music coming out. Thanks for sharing!

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Chinggis Khaan is probably my favorite tune of theirs. They did a really decent metallica cover recently.

Also, they have cooking videos:

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That straight up mosh pit awesomeness!

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Oh, and they did music for a recent star wars game, in which they invented the language they sang in.

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They’re even better live. Just everything is so much more intense, musically, these are not one of the bands that tries to sound like the album, they’re there to rock.

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Ooh, now I’ve got more music to go with Yat-Kha.

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one of the least populated countries on Earth

It’s low but not really least-territory. Now, population density, on the other hand…

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So glad to see them mentioned here.

I can still remember the face of the teenage son of friends of mine, who had to stop by my place to wait for them, and we started talking about music so I thought ‘I’ll bet he doesn’t know about The HU’: first the look of confusion, then incredulity that I would listen to such stuff, then realizing how cool it was, all in only a few seconds.

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I bought the updated re-release of their album last year, they’re a band that I really, really want to see play live when we’re allowed to.
Great to see heavy rock music being embraced by other cultures, bringing in their own styles of singing and instruments.

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Where have you been?

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Rap and metal seem to have been genres that Mongolian popular music was eager to make their own. Makes sense, the throat singing was already pretty metal to begin with, and I’m guessing rap was a natural fit based on how folk music functioned (you could draw a lot of parallels between gangsta rap and a lot of folk music traditions). I’m totally fascinated.

Particularly interesting is how rap cliches get adopted and transformed:

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The HU, huh? Seems like Ghenghis can.

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If you want to watch a particularly delightful reaction video to the HU:

I generally hate when people try to capitalize on the work of others by doing reaction videos etc…, but it’s really hard not to Squee out with her when you’re watching her videos. Very charming.

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I feel like if you look up “cool” in the dictionary one of the definitions is just “The HU.” Cuz yeah, these guys are freaking cool.

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I have come to seriously dislike this genre of video. Way to kill the vibe by stopping after 30 secs just as the tension is building, to witter on about what we’ve all also just seen and heard. Shut the fuck up, listen and watch, and tell us at the end what you think.

ETA but I’ll give her credit for seeming to know what she’s talking about (more than some do).

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